2.42 RC3 Released
The Blender Foundation has just released the third Release Candidate for Blender 2.42. With the builds converging towards a stable release, they expect to be ready for the final release around July 9th.
Ffmpeg support was meant to be in RC1 but integrating the library turned out to be more work then was anticipated.
Ton commented that ffmpeg support for the other platforms is scheduled for 2.43 or later. In the mean time, these platforms already have Quicktime support and this functionality overlaps with that of ffmpeg.
I guess we have the enthusiasm of the Linux development community to blame for the fact that Blender/Linux has more features than the other platforms now!
Download
To get started, download the 2.42 RC3 for your platform and grab the 2.42 demo files.
Bugreporting
Before helping out with testing, please note the following:
- If you found any problems in RC1 or RC2, please re-test them in RC3.
- If you have any (new or old) bug, check the open issues in the bugtracker before submitting a new one. If you have a better testcase or insight that might help to solve the bug, add it.
- Most important of all: do not report the issues here, but use the bugtracker!
It seems to me that you mixed up RC1 RC2 and RC3 a bit in that article.
Anyway, this is good news, dowloading now…
Ok, but where is the linux build? I guess it will be there sometime in the afternoon?
I’m not sure that the final FFMPEG will support over 200 codecs. Many of the interesting codecs (like h.264) need an extra library installed anyway, and there’s been talk of cutting Blender’s version of FFMPEG to an ‘FFMPEG lite’ with only the codecs that are really needed since the library is quite huge and bloats up the blender download. i.e. “Sega FILM/CPK, Used in many Sega Saturn console games.” is not exactly needed for Blender.
@tmr232: ah yes, fixed!
@panzi: I just checked with Ton. The Linux build should be available within a few hours.
@Matt: I blame Ton for that bit of info ;-)
@Matt: But it will be possible to compile blender with support for all installed codecs on your PC on your own?
Since FFMPEG is compiled statically into Blender it must have all libs like faac, faad, mp3lame, xvidcore and x264 compiled statically into FFMPEG, else you won’t have support for AAC, H264, XVid or MP3.
Right now I think it only uses the default FFMPEG, so, no AAC, H264, XVID or MP3.
But I might be wrong about it, since I haven’t followed the compile dudes to see if this was included.
Anyway, for us Linux fans is quite an improvement to have FFMPEG support, it allows for so much more …
I’m waiting impatient for the LINUX build (finally we’ll get the ffmpeg in blender, what a good news) !!
thanks TON & al. (not me ;-) for the good job.
Well but at least XviD/Divx/MGEG4 and MP3 would be great. With out that, what good is ffmpeg for?
You still have MOV and regular MPEG 4.
Else you can just compile from the source, like I do and get all the formats you want :) .
a pity writing theora (aka ogg video) isnt supported by ffmpeg. _I_ miss that export option in blender.
Very nice news! Compiling ffmpeg into blender was a good idea. mjpeg is not really a good codec for publications. to everyone who helped to make ffmpeg work: thanks!!
@elveo: you can simply use ffmpeg2theora to do this ;-)
@Bart : i was the one to say i did not wanted to add 2.4 Mb (iow 25%) to the download size in Os X builds, for a lot of useless codecs while the interestings ones (like h264) were left over. We had also the problem it was a last minute decision
and no proper support was available in scons. Plus ffmpeg dont compile easily with MSVC.
I will make sure ffmpeg is included properly in 2.43 (add scons support), but only when the users will have defined the right set of libs and codecs which are needed.
ffmpeg is already added for linux builds to replace quicktime on this platform. In fact some features of the sequencer are right now only available for ffmpeg, so the linux crowd will have the upper hand for some time.
We will also investigate to add those features (HDaudio track notabily) for quicktime.
Hello,
thanks to developpers for his whole work. Only writing to say that bugtracker don’t works, for me at least, and i must notify bugs in developper forums. Bugtracker says that my account is pending to confirmation (is pending from 1 year ago….), and help on main Blender pages says strange things about CVS and Tortoise that i DON’T WANT to understand.
Please, reporting bugs more easy!
Sorry for my tone, when i hear about the bugtracker… i don’t respond from myself !
a smile :-)
Glaurung
Excuse me,
you can view a post by me notifying a bug here:
http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=54183#54183
I don’t know if anybody is going to consider it, so if posting here there are more chances to be solved….
thanks,
Glau.
RC3 for linux is online now it seems – I just downloaded it to find that I only had half the file because the rest was still being uploaded lol – could this be classified as a *bug* in the website?? – epat.
sorry, I meant RC3a; RC3 didn’t work so they fixed and recompiled(fixed in theory – haven’t tested yet!) – epat.
tested now – yes they have fixed it but there are a few bugs with ffmpeg(to be expected really) – epat.
Missing link to the 2.42 Game demos:
download.blender.org/demo/test/engine-graphics-demos-2.42-preview19.zip
download.blender.org/demo/test/engine-physics-demos-2.42-preview34.zip
Will this rewrite of the render pipeline allow for rendering to (scalable) vector graphics kindof like maya’s mayavector renderer?? That would be really, really, cool if so, especially if it supported SVG…
I’m thinking if it’s the time to consider restructuring Blender a little bit. Its binary size is over 9 megs now, with a load of statically linked libraries inside. Even its internal libraries are statically linked. Most of other applications don’t work this way.
This is an interesting reading from THE glibc’s guru, Ulrich Drepper:
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/no_static_linking.html
Python still not works with blender 2.42RC3. Where is the source, so I can compile it on my own?
@panzi
Sources are in the CVS server at this point.
Log in with:
cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/bf-blender login
and finally download (update) the sources:
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/bf-blender co blender
Regards,
Renato.
@Renato Perini:
I like the fact that blender is staticly linked, it just runs out of the box on all the computers I’ve tried it on and is easily downloaded; whereas, if it was dynamic I would have to click through hundreds of websites for all the different libraries to download all the dependencies; and would also have to keep each library updated separately too otherwise I would be in danger of not benifiting from new features in blender that rely on these updated libraries. Then there is also the problem of some libraries having to be compiled by hand because there are no ready-built packages for them availible on the net for some OS’s. In fact, some programs that I’ve downloaded that use dynamic libraries have had so many dependencies – half of which won’t compile on my computer – that I’ve just deleted them straight away without even trying them! Of course, there are plenty of programs that aren’t like this at all; but the vast majority of programs that aren’t affected by these sorts of problems soon get bogged down by them since if some developer wants to code a new feature that only works with some obscure library installed they don’t usually see a reason not to – as long as the library is installed, compiled and working on their computer – which tends to break the program for other, less fortunate people! I personally have quite a lot of problems getting various libraries to compile/function properly on my computer, especially the more obscure ones; and blender uses quite a lot of odd libraries that I’m quite sure would never work right on my computer if I had to install them separately or compile them myself! That’s without even considering the problem of finding and recognizing where all these libraries are located. HOWEVER: If all the external libraries were included in a separate download in one easy precompiled package to download that you could just copy to some directory in blender’s path and run out of the box then I would be quite happy to see the change – but that entirely defeats the point of linking them dynamically in the first place!! – epat. ;)
Don’t fix it, if it isn’t broken!
Blender works out-of-the-box on most systems indeed, so statically linkage
solves a lot of hassle. Too many things can go wrong with dynamic linkage.
The weak arguments by Ulrich Drepper seem to be targetting closed source and ‘security’ by obfuscation. Blender is open source.
Looking forward to testing this latest RC. Been waiting for ffmpeg support for years in Linux. I hope in the future it will save me having to boot into windows on another pc to render animations into codecs other than avi raw and mjpeg.
I was hopeing that this would appear soon after hearing Linux being used on a number of the Project Orange computers. (am I right in thinking ffmpeg was a summer of code project from last year?)
So great news to hear the linux version instead of being disadvantaged will have the advantage for a bit in this respect. :-)
Staticly linked binaries work easily, but I can see the advantage to dynamically linked binaries. Personally I tend to try both if binaries are made for both cases and use which ever one works best. (Nice to have the safety net of a static binary)
Daniel
windows platform… quicktime… is there any possibility to install quicktime with a “offline” system (without internetconnect) or better without any itunes-stuff?
Need WinXp because of missing viedohardwaresupport under unix..
editing dv-media works fine (without audio) on my winXp system with 2.42rc1..:(
maybe someone at graphicall.org could compile me one version of the final 2.42 with ffmpeg libs
Try http://www.apple.com/quicktime/standalone
@erwin: thx 4 ur link. workx fine